


It Takes a Lot to Know a Woman

by plutosrobin



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: CHEFS KISS, Coming Out, F/F, I probably screwed up the timeline, Shoni - Freeform, because no, cuts off before the shark attack, i love them your honour, i pretend i do not see, listen i just, nora is the confederate?, sorta - Freeform, the girls finding out, their enemies to lovers arc?, unsinkable eight, where do i get a toni
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28395294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrobin/pseuds/plutosrobin
Summary: Shelby and Toni both agreed to keep whatever was going on strictly between them, which would be totally fine if the other girls didn't just figure it out themselves. Keeping this secret is going to be a whole lot harder than they thought.ORHow each of the girls figured out what was going on between Shelby and Toni.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 39
Kudos: 646





	It Takes a Lot to Know a Woman

**Author's Note:**

> pretty sure I messed up the timeline massively but I just really wanted to write something for these two because their arc is gorgeous and i love them.  
> prompt came from @mymintymess on tumblr <3

Fatin was the first to work it out, of course. Before even Shelby or Toni.

Back home, she’d had her fair share of experience in all things tension and avoidance, and had gone through the motions of that back-and-forth routine with plenty of guys. There was always this push-and-pull, waiting for the other to make the first move, never getting too close but always, _always_ , one step away from something more. A stubborn determination to remain hostile that inevitably ended with a passion too much for either of them to deny-

She was getting distracted.

Back on the plane, she dragged herself out of her thoughts and watched as the blonde Texan grabbed the rowdy basketball player (whose names she hadn’t yet learned), and was fully prepared to bet her $78,000 watch that something would happen between them. She could practically envision the rocky balancing act starting to play out before her, and the thought was even entertaining enough to distract her from her own misery about this whole trip, just for a few minutes.

After the crash, though, Fatin didn’t notice much of anything. She was too focused on the feeling of her wet clothes clinging to her skin and coarse sand scratching the side of her face and the fact that she had very nearly _died_. I mean, seriously, what if she’d gone down and her last conversation had been with a girl she barely knew, about the stylistic implications of shirts with slogans on them? Not exactly an epic way to go. She bounced back eventually, when cargo-shorts-girl (she still couldn’t remember any names) dragged her suitcase out of the water and some of the shock started to wear off, her matchmaking abilities coming back into sharper focus.

So, when the nine of them gathered on the rocks to discuss their options and Toni and the Jesus-girl ( _what_ was her name? Shelly? Shelby?) started bickering over water gathering, she definitely noticed. Everyone saw their dislike for each other, of course. It’s not like they were trying to hide it. They all just thought of it as yet another problem they’d have to face in this hellscape. Fatin, however, with her strange sixth sense, just hoped they’d make out while they were trying to find water and save them all some time.

Inevitably, that didn’t happen, and Fatin spent a whole lot of time over the next few weeks just waiting for them to get their shit together. Putting up with their constant drama was a drag, and it took everything she had to not just tie them to a tree until they worked out their shit, but as infuriating as they were, it really was none of her business.

She started to understand the issue when Shelby let her not-so-modern beliefs slip while the others tore through a pile of mussels, but again stood by her previous resolution to not get involved. Whatever would be would be. C’est la vie and all that shit. Not. Her. Business.

After a few weeks of their incessant bickering, though, Fatin finally gave in. The ‘chatterbox’ had been an elaborate attempt to get Shelby to admit her feelings so she could maybe help the blonde to come to terms with them. When that failed, though, she opted for a more direct approach.

“If you’re so worried about how she’s feeling, you should just go and talk to her.”

Her words were met with terror in the eyes of the other girl and she quickly clarified that nobody had told her, explaining her super sleuth abilities with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

And Fatin couldn’t help but feel proud when Shelby made her way up to the bluff to finally speak to Toni. She slipped on her biggest, gaudiest sunglasses and fell back onto the sand, arms stretched out behind her head in a lazy kind of triumph. At least someone had found something good in this shithole.

\---

Nora was also pretty quick to see something beyond the rivalry.

Her habit of subjective journaling had led to her learning much more about the other girls than they knew. After getting through their chores for the day, there wasn’t much to do other than sit around and talk, so Nora found one of the ‘Dawn of Eve’ notebooks and a working pen in one of the swag-bags and got to know the others the only way she knew how. She watched, and she wrote, and she drew, and she _learned_.

Fatin, for example, put on a front of indifference but really cared a lot more than she let on. Nora saw it in the way she talked down Leah, gently, when the other girl’s thoughts became too loud. As for Leah, Nora knew that she chewed on her bottom lip when she was thinking too hard, sometimes biting straight through it, and so she dedicated a whole page to a list of possible ways to calm her down (the first being a dirty Christmas joke). She learnt that Rachel wasn’t as independent as she had always thought, especially after the two finally started to reconcile their frayed relationship. She saw the opposite ways in which the two Texans reacted when talk turned to home: Shelby overcompensated with grandiose and glamourised stories, whereas Dot kept entirely silent. She learnt that Toni and Martha’s bond ran deeper than friendship, saw the way Toni sometimes looped her arms protectively around the other girl and was reminded of the way she cared for her own sister.

Nora’s diary was essentially a guide to understanding the dysfunctional little group she’d been stranded with, each entry accompanied with a small sketch. There were simple portraits of all of the girls, of course, but there were other things too. There was Dot looking grumpy in one of Fatin’s sweaters. There was Rachel holding the black box triumphantly overhead. There was Martha holding a turtle with a sweet smile. There was Leah, holding a burning book. There was Fatin at the top of a waterfall.

Nora never drew herself. There was enough of her left behind on the pages in the words she used to describe the others or the strokes of ink that formed her drawings. She was in the book too, if you looked hard enough.

It was one evening like any other, when conversation had lulled into a comfortable quiet, that Nora once again pulled out the little notebook to make her observations.

_Leah is sleeping on Dot’s lap. Fatin is trying out different outfits for Marcus. Martha is fake flirting with the mannequin. Rachel is eating, and she actually looks relaxed. Toni is staring at the fire. Shelby is staring at Toni._

Nora re-read the words she wrote as though they had been some unconscious thought, glancing up to check they were true. Shelby and Toni almost never voluntarily sat close together, but that night, for whatever reason, they had fallen onto the sand next to each other wordlessly. It probably had something to do with their exhaustion, too tired to be angry for just one evening, instead opting for an uneasy, silent truce. But Nora’s words were, of course, subjective as always, and so there was no way to dispute their honesty. Toni’s heavy gaze was definitely fixed on the flames, light dancing in her dark eyes, turning brown to gold. And Shelby’s face was definitely turned to the side, half hidden in shadow, watching the other girl in the same way you would a rare bird, like she expected Toni to take flight at any moment.

Nora knew that if she pointed it out, Shelby would look away quickly and pretend nothing had happened, so instead she kept quiet.

Instead, she drew them.

It was a simple sketch under the words she had written earlier. _Toni is staring at the fire. Shelby is staring at Toni_. She scratched in a few final details: the smudge of dirt on Toni’s cheek that brushed over some freckles, the sand which held imprints from where Shelby had been digging her fingers into it. Satisfied, she turned the page to start on a new drawing, this one of the sun chasing the moon across the sky after a long, dark night.

Nora couldn’t help but marvel at how similar the two pictures ended up being.

That night she shoved the notebook under the balled-up sweater she was using as a pillow and thought over the things she had learnt that day. Leah and Dot were bonding, Fatin and Martha were going to have some sort of duel over Marcus eventually, Rachel was starting to take care of herself again. Nora had known all of these things for a little while now.

_Toni is staring at the fire. Shelby is staring at Toni._

That was something new. Something Nora was sure she’d see more of now. 

She wondered when they’d see it for themselves.

\---

Dot made it a habit of staying out of other people’s business, but even she caught on that there was something going on between Shelby and Toni.

She had spent her time on the island doing absolutely everything she could to maintain a cohesive and productive group, but those two little shits really hadn’t made it any easier for her. Organising the chores meant trying not to put them together, or playing mediator if they did get put on the same job and inevitably ended up arguing over something. Casual chats with one of them always turned into complaints about the other, and, to be honest, Dot was sick of listening to it. 

So, when Rachel returned from her foraging one afternoon with a bag full of mussels, it was all Dot could do not to scream with joy. Finally the island was giving something good back to them.

Of course, that all went to shit pretty quickly.

It started when Toni’s (admittedly hilarious) jokes sparked a revelation that none of the girls were really prepared for. One minute they were all cheering and laughing and Dot briefly considered that maybe the group had at last gotten past their petty bickering stage. That was, until Shelby snapped at Toni and all hell broke loose. 

So the rest of the meal was awkward enough, once the two of them had stormed off. They ate in silence, Nora abandoning the mussels in favour of snatching up her notebook and quickly writing something down. Dot had half a second to wonder what the hell that could be about before Martha got up, murmuring something about drying out some clothes before wandering off. Dot looked over at Fatin desperately, knowing the girl usually found something wildly inappropriate (and yet entertaining) to say in these situations, but found the brunette deep in thought. _Of course_ , Fatin chose now for some serious reflection, when she hadn’t been remotely serious for a single moment on the island before then.

The day turned from bad to worse when everyone started throwing up. The logical part of Dot knew that she should be getting the medicine bag right now, stocked with essential halofen to push back the waves of nausea, but her stomach was churning and her vision was swimming and she just couldn’t think straight. 

She was dimly aware of waving Shelby off to go help some of the sicker girls when some of her strength started to return, dragging herself over to the sea to splash her face with cold water and hope that it might do something, anything, to clear her head. Leah, too, seemed to be recovering slightly, so Dot sent her off to retrieve the pilot’s bag while she tried to look after the rest of them. _Tried_ being the key word.

Shelby had set off a few minutes earlier to get some more water, so Dot was left alone to force some liquid into the other five girls. Nora, Fatin and Rachel seemed to be on the up some time later but Martha and Toni were rapidly going downhill, and if Dot was honest, she was scared. Really fucking scared.

Shelby was back with the water but there was nothing either of them could do without the pilot’s bag, and Dot was internally cursing herself for not going to retrieve it in the first place. It seemed that the blond was awash in her own stress, too, shooting nervous glances over at Martha and Toni every few minutes or so, hands trembling almost imperceptibly as she set up a few bottles of water to boil. Dot chalked it down to the general worry they were all feeling at their circumstances and put all her energy into helping Fatin to get Toni and Martha to drink.

It was only later, when Leah returned with the (wrecked) medicine bag, that Dot even considered Shelby’s worry may be a little different to her own. Frustratedly, she held up the halofen pill and pointed out that there was only one.

“Come on Dottie! It’s obvious who needs it most.”

Dot agreed with her, of course, but saw something oddly like desperation in the other girl’s eyes and thought there was maybe something other than necessity behind her suggestion. Either way, Shelby had taken the pill from Dot and was holding it out to Toni, trying everything she could to get her to take it, but when she was met with Toni’s usual stubborn resistance, Dot prepared to do it herself. To her surprise though, before she could even think to grab the tablet from Shelby’s hand, she had shoved the other girl to the sand and forced it into her mouth, growling at her to _swallow the fucking pill_ before jumping up and speeding away faster than any of them had the chance to react.

Later that night, Martha’s head resting feverishly in Toni’s lap, Dot finally started to put the pieces together as she listened to the two girls, yet again, arguing.

“Toni, you were dying!”

“Who cares? I don’t matter! Fuck, I don’t matter.”

The brunette’s voice trailed off as she buried her face in her friend’s hair, missing the look that passed across Shelby’s face. Missed the way her eyes burned with a painfully obvious _yes you do _.__

____

Dot saw it though. She saw it plain as day. Somewhere, behind her worry for Martha and her anger at Leah, she wondered when Toni would see it, too.

____

\---

____

The next person to figure out something was Leah.

____

Since the moment she found Jeanette’s second phone, she’d been insanely suspicious of pretty much everyone on the Island, her paranoia getting the best of her as she spent the majority of her time watching the other girls and waiting for one of them to slip up; to reveal some big, dark secret. At first, she had suspected Dot, her extensive survival skills seeming a little too convenient to be coincidental. Fatin was her next target, but she quickly shook herself out of that idea because that girl just did not care enough to be involved. Rachel was too eager to escape. Martha and Nora were too sweet to put them all through something like this. Toni’s emotions ran too wild for her to be a valuable asset. That left one option.

____

So, inevitably, she ended up watching Shelby too. Fairly early on, she had decided that the Texan was hiding something – what exactly it was she didn’t know, but there was just something off about the perfect, perky image she presented. And Leah was determined to find out exactly what it was.

____

The sneaking off at night, the constant ice-breakers, the never-ending positivity – it all pointed towards something seriously suspicious. Almost like ‘Shelby Goodkind, Texas pageant queen and ordained youth minister’ was all an elaborate act.

____

So, when she found the two bags, one of them containing exactly what they needed (lighter, medication, food), it was simply too good to be true. Leah finally let out all of her suspicions, no matter how far-fetched, and found to her frustration that everyone was looking at her like she was crazy.

____

_Why couldn’t they see it?_

____

Leah was screaming then, trying to get them to understand. She was holding the lighter above her head. She was on the floor and Nora was leaning over her, begging her to just _get a grip_. She was standing again, hands fisted in the front of Shelby’s jacket and she wasn’t quite sure how she’d ended up here and everything was a blur but god-damnit she wanted the _truth_.

____

“You’re hiding something, I fucking know it,” Leah growled. She was determined. She was going to get some honesty no matter what it took.

____

“Okay! Yes. Maybe I am.”

____

_Finally_. Finally, the truth would be revealed and they could get the hell out of here. Finally-

____

But Shelby had pulled out her teeth and held them up like that was the deep dark secret. Like it was an answer to all Leah’s burning questions: that was it, just some fake teeth on a piece of plastic. And for the first time, Leah noticed the way the other girl was trembling, saw the tears welling in her eyes, and realised just how horribly wrong she’d been. There was still something off about Shelby, she was certain, but she was no spy. And it _definitely_ wasn’t the stupid fucking teeth.

____

Drawing back her hands like she’d been burnt, Leah watched as the blonde stormed away and caught the fiery glare she shot towards Toni with hawk like observation.

____

“Just one more reason to hate me. Not that you needed any more,” she spat.

____

_Huh._

____

Leah’s hunches were never unimportant. Sure, sometimes she got them seriously, seriously wrong but there was always _something_ behind her ideas. And keeping her gaze glued on Toni, who was watching the other girl walk away like she desperately wanted to follow her, she considered a different possibility.

____

Shelby was definitely hiding something. But maybe it wasn’t what she’d originally thought.

____

\---

____

Rachel was the next to work it out.

____

The appearance (and very quick disappearance) of the pilot had put a dampener on the whole group, but it was possibly Rachel that had been the most affected. Since day one, she had been the most dedicated to escape, doing absolutely everything she could possibly think of to avoid setting down roots and work towards rescue. Whether it was an ambitious hike to the highest point of the island, or a frantic (and fairly dangerous) swim out to the plane wreck to retrieve the black box, she hadn’t faltered in her determination for even a second.

____

If the disappointment at yet another failed rescue opportunity wasn’t enough, the group’s hasty decision to devour all of their rations meant that they were now facing a third day without food. After years of battling with her own body to stay hungry, and finally coming to terms with the idea of eating when she needed to, of taking care of herself, the chance to do just that had been snatched away from her. It was like taking two steps forward and a thousand fucking steps back.

____

So, when Martha led them to the goat later that day, she looked past the blood and death and saw only salvation, slinging the thing around her shoulders like some sort of cape and marching back to their makeshift camp with her first genuine smile in days.

____

It was only later on in the evening, as the six girls tucked ravenously in to their well-deserved meal, that she thought of their missing members.

____

“Hey, Martha. Do you know where Toni and Shelby went?”

____

Distantly, she heard Fatin’s quiet laughter, but figured Dot had just made some stupid joke, and so ignored it.

____

“They split off from me a while ago. Probably just got lost or something. If they’re not back by morning we can go and look for them.”

____

“That is, if they haven’t killed each-other by then,” Rachel returned. This time she couldn’t miss the way her words seemed to cause the other girls to break into yet another fit of giggles, but when she looked over at them out of curiosity, the all fell silent again, so she pushed the thought to the back of her mind and focused on the glorious feeling of being full for the first time in days.

____

The next morning, Toni and Shelby wandered into the camp with shirts full of lychees, stumbling through some awkward explanation of where they’d been all this time. Yet again, Rachel heard some of the other girls muffled snickers and looked between the two, trying her best to see what was so damn funny about this.

____

Toni looked relaxed, which was pretty weird for her – that girl was usually all kinds of psycho. Shelby, on the other hand, was shuffling nervously from foot to foot and scuffing the sand between her toes, trying desperately not to make eye contact with anyone else. What was most strange, though, was that after a whole evening together, neither one of them seemed ridiculously pissed. Nobody was yelling, nobody had a black eye. They weren’t even shooting their usual hostile glances at each other.

____

Oh. _Oh_.

____

“Well, shit.” She muttered with a smirk. The knowing laughs from the previous night all made sense now. Martha looked at her questioningly and Shelby’s eyes blew wide in a brief panic, but Rachel met Fatin’s warning glare and quickly amended her statement.

____

“Well, shit,” she repeated, a little louder this time, her smile holding a tiny hint of mischief that thankfully seemed to fly over the heads of Martha, Toni and Shelby. “Lychees!”

____

_Of course_ they had left the rest of the group to potentially starve so they could spend the night together. What else had she really expected.

____

_Fucking idiots_ , Rachel thought. But she was smiling the whole time.

____

\---

____

Strangely enough, Martha was the last one to figure out anything was going on between her two friends.

____

She spent every waking moment (and, actually, sometimes while they slept) glued to the side of one of the two girls, so it could be said that she knew them better than anyone else on the island. The trouble was, she was so close to them both individually that she hadn’t yet noticed the way they acted together.

____

The first couple of weeks were rough, and Martha was torn between her lifelong best friend (sister, more like) and the girl with whom she had inexplicably bonded since crashing on the island. Of course, their conflict was problematic for the whole group, but Martha was stuck right in the middle of it, being pulled in two directions and trying desperately not to be ripped in half.

____

So, when the two girls seemed to lose their intense rivalry overnight, Martha didn’t have the energy to second guess it. All she knew was that they weren’t at each other’s throats anymore and she had an unexpected reprieve from trying to choose between them. It could maybe be explained by Toni’s commitment to control her anger, or perhaps Shelby had apologised for what she’d said that afternoon when Rachel had brought back the mussels. Either way, they were good, and she didn’t want to dare question that.

____

The ‘unsinkable eight’, as Martha liked to call them, were all gathered around the fire, happily gorging themselves on leftover goat and lychees after days of going hungry. Martha was playing a super high stakes game of uno with Nora, Rachel, Leah and Dot. Fatin and Shelby were fiddling around with some origami creation that she vaguely remembered making a lot of when she was younger. Toni had taken herself up to the bluff a few minutes before to get some air. For once on that stupid island, it seemed like everyone was at peace.

____

Out of the corner of her eye, Martha saw Shelby spring to her feet and start making her way up the bluff towards Toni, leaving Fatin to flop onto the sand with a triumphant smirk. Watching the two girls talking atop the cliff, Martha gripped her cards so hard her knuckles turned white - she _really_ didn’t want them to go back to hating each other, not when things were finally starting to get good.

____

But as she watched, Shelby reached out a tentative hand to rest on Toni’s cheek. Martha braced herself for Toni to go apeshit and slap away the blonde’s hand, but instead she saw how her friend leaned into the touch, then lean forward, then-

____

_Oh my god, were they really fucking kissing?_

____

“Martha, it’s your turn.”

____

“Martie? Hellooooo?”

____

The rest of the girls followed her gaze, confused, before spotting their friends on top of the cliff and grinning from ear to ear.

____

“About time,” Fatin grumbled, coming over to the rest of them to join the game.

____

The other the girls all nodded in agreement, leaving only Martha in open mouthed shock, which elicited yet another chorus of laughs from the rest of them.

____

“Did you really not know?”

____

Martha shook her head, joining in their grins as she finally put down a card, shaking off her shock to make way for an overwhelming happiness for friends.

____

“I thought they hated each other.”

____

Fatin clapped her on the shoulder with yet another smirk.

____

“Oh, angel. I have so much to teach you.”

____

\---

____

Up on the bluff, wind sliding over her skin like a cool embrace, Toni felt calmer than she had since they’d first crashed on that god-forsaken island. There was none of the burning anger left, none of the resentment or the jealousy or the stupid petty dramatics that had kept her on edge for weeks. There was still a healthy dose of fear, of course, at the possibility that they might never make it out of that place, but it all took a back seat for a second.

____

Because right at that second, she was kissing the pretty girl on the cliff and her immature little family was whooping and hollering beneath her and the fear ebbed away, little by little, to be replaced with something indescribable. Something inherently good.

____

And Toni just didn’t have it in her to be that scared about something that could be good.

____

So, instead, she drew one hand away from the blonde’s face to give her friends the finger without even breaking away from Shelby. Her action elicited a few barks of laughter from below, and a small smile spread across her face that she felt, more than saw, mirrored on the other girl.

____

_Yeah_ , Toni thought. _There was nothing scary about this._

____

**Author's Note:**

> ty for reading, hopefully they’re not too ooc?? title is from 'it takes a lot to know a man' by damien rice becasue that song feels very shelby-esque  
> i adore these dorks and this show, hmu on tumblr @rtobez if you wanna scream about it or, like, anything else really <3


End file.
